


Foundations Of Clay

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Castiel, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel Has Doubts, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester Use Their Words, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Original Character Death(s), Protective Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fallout of Sam's plan - to set angel against demon and save Anna - is more far reaching than Dean expected.  It's created a gulf between him and Sam, and probably pissed off the angels to no small extent.  </p>
<p>But more than that, Dean is troubled by the guilt he feels over Castiel.  He wants to fix things between him and Sam, and he wants to set things straight with the angel.</p>
<p>He'll probably have to save his feathery ass first, though, if he wants to get that chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foundations Of Clay

They’re both too tired to say much when they get back to the car, but Dean can see that Sam’s willing to try. Ruby’s gone, off doing whatever demons do when they’re not helping hunters save renegade angels. That means there’s nothing to distract Sam from giving him that look, pensive and worried. If it wasn’t for the yawns almost splitting his brother’s face open, Dean knows Sam would be at him already.

Back at the motel, he parks the Impala sloppily, and thinks about straightening it up. He finally decides, fuck it. It’s just after 2am and he doubts anyone is going to pull in here this late...or this early...looking for a motel room. It can keep until morning.

He and Sam stumble into the room. They forego a shower, and Dean watches his little brother just collapse onto the bed, fully clothed. A minute later he mumbles something into the pillow and a minute after that he’s asleep. 

Dean never thought he’d be so grateful for the weariness that’s clinging to their bones. He tugs the blanket out from under Sam and covers him with it. Now though, it’s just him and the darkness of the room. No matter how exhausted he is...and he’s pretty fucking tired...Dean knows he’s going to get no sleep tonight.

It’s not Sam he wants to talk to. 

~~

Ellie parks the car well behind the house. It’s just after 2am in the morning, and she’s pretty sure no one else is up or about. In Little Trees, even the town drunks are safely in bed at this hour. But since what she’s about to do is completely illegal she won’t take a chance. An unnecessary chance.

She grabs her backpack from the car, does a mental check to make sure everything’s there, and kneels down by the back door. It takes only a few minutes to pick the lock, and then she’s inside. The house is as per the plans she saw. Laundry room downstairs, kitchen ahead on the left, living room on the right, and bedrooms upstairs.

Flashlight in hand, she checks the first floor rooms briefly, wanting a feel for the place now she’s finally inside, and then heads upstairs. The walk in closet is where she wants to start, and thank you deputy dimwit for thinking he really is all that attractive and practically tripping over himself to show her the report.

Even though she knows she’s alone in the house – and she’s only human, and there are a lot of rumours about this place, so she isn’t too hard on herself – she imagines all the way along the hallway that there’s somebody a half step behind her.

By the time she reaches the closet, she knows there is.

~~

By now the Winchester brothers will be asleep in their motel room, hopefully at peace for once.

Angels don’t rest. Their mission regarding Anna might have failed – at least failed in Uriel and their superiors’ eyes – but demons don’t rest either. Another seal is in jeopardy, and Castiel is once more embroiled in the battle.

His strength hasn’t fully returned since the fight with Alastair. The demon holding him from behind squeezes with its powerful arms, and Castiel feels the bones of his vessel creak painfully. Jimmy begins to panic, the pain reaching down to where Castiel has his soul sheltered.

_Hush_ , he soothes, trying to push Jimmy deeper. He slams his head back, hoping to inflict enough pain to loosen the demon’s grip, but the thing dodges and holds him tighter. Shadows form at the edges of his vision. If it inflicts enough damage, he’ll be forced out of the vessel. Jimmy will die and the demon’s host will die. He struggles but it’s not enough.

Uriel is there without warning, just a cry of “Brother!” before he reaches around them both. His hands lock over the demon’s and he pulls. It’s slow and tortuous but the thing’s arms are forced apart, inch by inch, until Castiel falls forward, on to his hands and knees. He ends up on his back, focusing on his pulsing Grace. His vessel begins to heal. 

His brother spins the demon around. They grapple, but Uriel has the advantage. He shoves his hand against the demon’s forehead, and Castiel feels it seize and thrash as it’s expunged from its host. The human body tumbles to the ground, unconscious. 

Uriel stares down at him then bends to grab his coat in both hands. He hauls Castiel to his feet. A moment later they’re outside and Castiel looks around at what’s left of their battlefield.

The sidewalk is torn and crushed. Water pipes have burst, and fountains spray over the road. Most of the buildings – the houses, the shops – are on fire. Cars are tipped over, burning wrecks. He reaches out, but he knows that there are very few survivors among the people who lived here. 

_We lost the seal_ , Uriel tells him.

Castiel nods. He’s aware; he felt the moment it broke, just as he felt Lilith’s triumph. Dark and strong and so overwhelming it almost hurt. But it isn’t all they lost.

Uriel takes his silence as the dismay that it is. _There are other seals, Castiel_.

Yes, there are. But there are no other towns called Harrisburg. There are no other children aged eight called Tommy Bolan who like to ride their bikes too fast around the corner despite their mothers’ frequent admonishments. There are no other sixty year old physicians named Norman Arthur Coins who know they have – or had, now – six months to live and have to decide how to tell their wives and their children.

_Brother_?

The other angels have gathered around them. There is no further need to remain here.

_I’m fine_ , Castiel insists.

As one, they fly, leaving the broken town behind them.

~~

Bobby calls them in the morning. It’s right in the middle of Sam’s attempt to talk about what they did, and Dean ignores Sam’s scowl as he takes the call.

Five minutes later they’re on the road again, the stereo louder than normal. Sam’s given up at least for now. Dean knows it’s not the end of it, but he can at least get it straight in his head before Sam starts trying to pick it apart. 

He glances through the rear view mirror at the backseat now and again, not sure if he’s waiting in hope or trepidation for the angel to appear. Either way, the seat stays empty for the duration of their journey to the town.

“So you going to tell me what we’re after here?” Sam volunteers as Dean pulls in at the Little Trees motel. It’s early, the place is quiet, and they’re booked into a room within minutes. They haul their gear inside, set to salting the windows and doors.

“Friend of Bobby’s asked him if anybody could swing by. Sounds like a haunted house. Maybe.” He doesn’t realise until then that it must seem like he’s frozen Sam out. He can see the cogs turning and he knows Sam has his own ideas as to why. He needs to fix it, but somehow the words he needs just slide out of reach. 

“Right,” Sam says, finally, like he’s given up waiting on something from Dean he knows he’s not going to get. “Food first?”

Dean nods, suddenly aware that he could eat. “There was a diner on the way here. They probably even do salad.” It’s half hearted, and it sounds it, but Sam tries to meet him half way, and puts on a smile that at least looks sincere.

Sam has his laptop with him and they settle into a booth in the diner. It’s a little different from other diners they’ve been in. It’s themed, images of trees decorating the Formica table tops, and on the menus, the napkins, and the cutlery. Even the waitresses have aprons with trees on front, and there’s just too much green.

“So, this Williams house,” Sam says, once the waitress has taken their order and they have enough privacy to talk quietly without anyone eavesdropping. “Bobby’s friend may have something to worry about. Since it was built, there’s been like twelve disappearances. No set cycle that I can see, the last people to vanish were a couple of kids two weeks ago.”

“Not the last,” Dean says. He sips the coffee – it’s like day old dishwater – and raps his fingers absently on the table top. “Sheriff found an abandoned car out back of the house this morning. Belonged to a local hack called Ellie Trainer. Bobby told me,” he tacked on, aware this is something he should have said to Sam sooner. 

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Sam using his laptop as cover, and then the food comes. 

“Any ideas where we could start?” Dean offers, finally. 

Sam doesn’t look up at him. “You mean other than you telling me why the hell you’re so pissy?”

What can he say to that? He blames Sam for what they did. He blames himself. He blames Cas. He blames Anna. He isn’t sure there’s anybody he doesn’t blame. 

“You never had a bad day?” is all he can find.

Sam stares at him for a long moment, and then shrugs dismissively. “The house. Or the newspaper. Or maybe the parents of one of the runaways.”

“Maybe the sheriff.” Dean knows it’s best to make themselves known to the local law enforcement first, even if they’re using cover story of the week. He doesn’t want them ending up in the cells because somebody reports them for weird behaviour.

“Okay, whatever.” Sam shuts the laptop over and slips it into the bag. “But we are going to talk about this, Dean. And before we leave this town.”

~~

They tell the sheriff and his deputy they’re writing a book on the history of small towns. For a while it could go either way – it’s a cover they’ve used before, and sometimes they end up with more help than they could need mainly because everybody wants a feature in the book. Sometimes – like Dean thought it was going to be this time – they get told in no uncertain terms that the town has history that nobody wants dredged up.

Sheriff Edgar rightly assumes they’re here because of the Williams house. In his own words, it’s the only notable thing about this town to outsiders. He makes a good effort at quashing any, what he terms, sensationalism. Dean and Sam listen, and nod in the right places, when he tells them that people have vanished in that house, but only because no one knows where they are now. It’s not haunted; no people eating monster lives in the basement. 

They don’t mention Ellie Trainer because there’s no reasonable explanation for them knowing about her yet, and they haven’t spoken to Bobby’s friend either. Mainly because Bobby didn’t tell them who the friend was, and Dean can get when somebody doesn’t want involved more than they already are.

By the time they leave the sheriff’s, they know he’s going to be keeping an eye on them. 

~~

Sam thinks maybe he should just give up on it. Nothing and nobody can make Dean talk about something he doesn’t want to. But this is getting between them, and there’s enough crammed in there already that he feels like he and his brother are standing on different continents. 

He knows what’s getting at Dean. It was his ace plan, Mothra and Godzilla, angels and demons. In the same room, let them fight it out. It was such an ace plan that it didn’t have an ending. Sam’s still a little surprised at that himself. What kind of plan was it that he still doesn’t know how he intended it to finish?

Or is it maybe that he didn’t care, that he just wanted to see who’d win? 

Probably that’s one of the things pricking at Dean like a burr under his saddle. If Sam doesn’t know, even now that Anna is once more a full on angel and therefore as safe from angelic assassins as she can be, then how can Dean even hope to figure it out?

He’s sorry it came to that, to having to pit angels against demons, but the way he looks at it they didn’t have much of a choice. If Dean can’t see that, then maybe it’s a different kind of talk they need to be having. Either way it’s moot because he knows Dean will avoid and stall and ignore and unless Sam manages to trick him into it, they won’t be discussing this.

But at least they can communicate about their current hunt. With the sheriff probably keeping an eye on them, they need to do things as by the book as possible for as long as possible. So they look up the property manager, Martha Lott, and tell her their story, and ask for a viewing of the house.

Sam ends up in her car, with Dean following in the Impala, and he lets her waffle on about the history of the house that he already knows. Built by Darrick Williams around the turn of the 20th century, a self made man who moved there with his family. His wife left him and took the kids, apparently because she found the house unsettling. Rumour has it she’d taken an immigrant lover and had gone back to him.

Williams was the first one to vanish although most people believe he took a header off Finnish Cove. The house changed hands a lot after that, and in 1964 Peter Blake bought it as a wedding gift for his wife. They moved in on the day of their marriage and by midnight he was single again and the chief suspect in a murder investigation.

Sam knows the story. Mrs Blake went into the bathroom and never came out. She was never seen again and Peter Blake also vanished, although more in terms of going into hiding than being swallowed by what was apparently a very hungry house. 

He tries to bring up the runaways, the closest disappearances that he’s actually able to know about, but he gets a little sidetracked when Martha’s hand finds its way to his knee. He clears his throat, keeps his voice steady, and asks if she thinks something happened to those two kids that vanished in the house.

Her hand shifts to change gears, and Sam takes the opportunity to move as far to the other side of the seat as he can and still be inside the vehicle. Dean would totally be loving this, but he doubts even his big brother would actually take the obvious opportunity Martha’s presenting. She might be something of a MILF to anybody that way inclined, but Sam knows she’s not Dean’s type.

She’s not his either, and he tries to think of as many gentle put-offs as he can, because if they piss her off no way she’ll let them in the house.

“I think they just ran away,” she offers. She doesn’t try to touch Sam again, like she’s maybe noticed he’s two steps from jumping out of the moving car. “If I tell you this, it goes no further and it definitely doesn’t make it into that book of yours. Rudy’s dad...wasn’t a nice man, that’s all I’m saying.”

Sam wonders at her definition of ‘not a nice man’. She’s already preceded every piece of salacious history on the house with the caveat ‘this goes no further’. Sam takes this correctly as her way of saying publish what you want. He knows the house has been on the market forever, since the bank repossessed it from Peter Blake years ago, and Martha took a chance on buying and refurbishing it, hoping for a quick sale.

She’s still hoping and Sam guesses the _book_ he and Dean are writing would probably do a lot to attract some outside interest to the property. Shame there _is_ no book, but he doesn’t think any interest it did attract would come with removal trucks.

When they park up, Sam manages to keep Dean between him and Martha. If she minds, she doesn’t say so. Dean picks up on his uneasiness pretty fast, and for a moment Sam thinks his brother will just ease out of the way, stand back and watch the fun. Reverse c-blocking as it were. 

But Dean doesn’t. He stays put, a firm wall that repels all Martha’s attempts. Dean doesn’t seem to get her interest the way Sam does. She goes kind of cold on them after a bit, walking them through the house, giving the estate agent talk rather than letting slip any further details like the kind they want to hear. 

Dean distracts her at one point so Sam can run an EMF meter over the area he’s standing in. Nothing. He lets out a frustrated sigh. He’s going to have to do the same for Dean when they go upstairs, and after Martha finally getting the hint he doesn’t want to end up with her playing touchy-feely.

As they head upstairs, Martha leading, Dean leans in and says. “You’re getting over a bad break-up.”

Sam stares at him, puzzled. “I am?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Dude. Had to tell her something. You couldn’t just take one for the team?”

Sam kind of wants to hit him. “Why is it it’s me that has to do the taking when they’re twice my age?” Then he wants to hit himself. They’re talking low enough there’s no way she can hear, but he likes to think he’s a little bit nicer to the fairer sex than Dean is. Now he sounds just like him.

Dean shrugs. “Gotta play the hand you’re dealt, Sammy.”

It’s an opening, of sorts, and Sam goes for it with vigour. “Funny you should mention that. Being that’s exactly what _we_ did last night.”

Dean stomps ahead of him, and Sam dutifully works on Martha, asking questions about the people who lived here, what they did, even turning to the recession and its effect on the property market, all so Dean can get a couple of minutes alone with the EMF.

“Peter Blake still lives in town,” Martha tells him. She’s thawed a little towards him, and when her hand touches his arm it’s more sympathy than a come on. Sam starts to feel a little guilty. Maybe she’s lonely. He’s starting to feel like he treated her like Typhoid Mary back in the car. 

“He does?”

“It’s not surprising, but after what happened to his wife...well, would you go see a doctor like that? He wouldn’t leave town though. Kept insisting he didn’t touch her. Who knows, but I wouldn’t take a chance on being alone with him.”

“And if no one would see him professionally, and he wouldn’t leave, he eventually couldn’t keep up the mortgage.”

Martha nods. “The bank foreclosed, they couldn’t sell the property and then I – in my questionable wisdom – bought it. I’ve been pouring money into it ever since.”

Sam puts his hand on her shoulder. It’s probably the only truly honest, open thing she’s said to him since he got in the car. “Things can turn around.”

“If you write an interesting enough piece on this place in your book, they just might.”

Dean interrupts, with a few questions that earn them the information that the kids’ rucksacks were found in the closet, with their jackets. They’d been sleeping there, and then nothing. When Martha looks away, Dean shakes his head at Sam.

So...hungry house 13, Winchesters 0.

~~  
They decide to bite the bullet and head for the newspaper office first. Dean knows people. They can ask for local colour, mention the house, and somebody there is going to let slip about their missing reporter. It’ll be smooth as a hot knife through butter.

The Little Trees Courier is located in a small corner office. The door has one of those bells attached that tinkles when somebody comes in. Dean can’t think why. There’s no ‘back’ to the place. All it has are three desks, the nearest belonging to a tired looking mousy haired woman who’s busy typing up sheets of copy. Secretary, he guesses, and she barely looks up when they stop at her desk, which is practically right at the door.

“Yes?”

“We’d like to see the editor,” Dean says, and tries to give her his smile, but she’s already looking back to her work.

“Marty!” she yells.

Marty appears from under the second desk, looking flushed, folder in his hand. The papers are still sticking out, and he slaps it down on the desktop. “Sharon, maybe you could find a way to fit some filing into your busy schedule. I don’t want to be unreasonable about it. But you know it is part of what we pay you for.”

Sharon pauses, hands frozen in the middle of typing. Dean kind of wants to back away then, already reaching for Sam’s wrist to pull him back too. He glances quickly over the desk, but there’s no sharp implements. There is her keyboard, though, and he doesn’t want to see anybody get beaten to death with something made by Dell.

“Uh...hi,” he volunteers, and yeah – as opening lines for derailing potentially homicidal conflicts go...that’s sweet. “I’m Dean Andrews, this is my brother Sam. We’re writing a book on the local history of this town, and we hoped you might let us have a look through your archives.”

Marty just stares at them, and Dean wonders if this little spat they just saw is typical or the result of one of their staff going missing overnight. He doesn’t look at the third desk directly, but he’s pretty sure he knows who it belongs to.

Finally, Marty stands, and waves them over to his desk. Dean snags a second chair on the way, and he and Sam sit.

“Sheriff mentioned you might be by. Why the hell would you want to write a book about Little Trees?”

“Well, it’s not just about this town,” Sam intercedes. “The country’s changing, and we’re hoping to use the history of a selection of small towns as a chronicle of these changes.”

Dean has to admit, that sounds pretty convincing. Just what a geek author would say, and well...Sammy’s a geek, so there you go. He lets Sam take it from there, watches his brother lead Marty where they want the conversation to go, and before long the Williams house comes up, and Marty’s slyly hinting at Ellie’s absence from work this morning.

“I don’t know why I even took her on,” he says, finally abandoning any subtlety. “Well, I do. Favour to a friend. Road to hell, and all that.”

“Is she alright?” Dean asks. Marty hasn’t actually come right out and said that Ellie disappeared in the house.

“Who knows?” Marty says, and the ‘who cares’ that’s not actually tacked onto the end of that sentence is pretty obvious. “Look, guys, the sheriff’d lock me up for this, but I think he’s wasting his time. Ellie never settled here. Always looking for a chance to get back into the big time, and she thought the Williams house was it. She could write a feature on it, her old paper would snap her back up, and she could just get the hell out of town. Believe me, I wish it had worked.”

“Then she’s just vanished?” Sam glances at Dean then back to Marty.

“No. She left her car out back of the house, and probably went to hole up somewhere. Then in a couple of days she’ll reappear with some cockamamie story about the house and finding the runaways or Satan living in the basement. I have no fucking idea, and I care even less. That house is a waste of time. Sure, some bad shit happened there. Bad shit happens in every single fucking home in America. People aren’t interested in reading about it anymore. Not when they can pick up the Enquirer and see the latest celebrity fad puking down her dress on the way to rehab.”

Wow, Dean thought. Bitter, much? Maybe Ellie isn’t – wasn’t – the only one resenting being stuck in this town.

“Why did she come here, if she hated it so much?” Sam asks. It’s out with the scope of their cover, sure, but since Marty opened the door....

He scoffs, a little. “She had a fling with her married boss. His wife found out and gave him a choice – fire her, get her out of town, or she’d leave. She had the money in the marriage, so what was Bill to do? By the time he was done, this was the only gig she could get, and only because he begged me.”

They steer the topic back to the house itself. Marty thinks the house is about as haunted as his right shoe, but he lets them into the archive. The Courier was there before Williams built the house, and it’s pretty informative. It mentions the disappearances they already know of, sometimes there are pictures of the people who vanished, but each time there’s a reasonable logical explanation.

Dean sees an issue from early 1964 that deals with the apparent murder of Alison Blake by her husband Peter. He shows it wordlessly to Sam. There’s a picture too, posed for, maybe out of a medical yearbook or something. Peter Blake is maybe in his early to mid thirties. He looks like Dr. Kildare. He doesn’t look like a guy who would buy a house, marry a woman and then kill her on their wedding night in their new home.

But who does?

There’s nothing else to find out from these archives. Every story ends the same. Suicide through depression. On the run from the police. Murder, though never proven. 

Actually, not every story ends the same. The two runaway kids. They don’t even get a mention. He points that out to Sam.

“Maybe even a couple of kids running away from home isn’t newsworthy in this town.”

“Maybe,” Dean says, but he wonders.

~~

It isn’t Uriel that Zachariah summons.

His superior has chosen a vessel, clearly that of a wealthy man – on some level Castiel realises this does not surprise him, but he quashes the rebellious thought with a sense of horror that it found its way into him. He stands, head lowered respectfully, as Zachariah looks out from a balcony across the city know as Los Angeles.

The vessel’s house is huge. It is clean and cool, and Castiel thinks of where the Winchesters might be staying right now. If they have actually found accommodation or are staying in their car. He has to relax his hands, to unclench fists he doesn’t remember making.

“I’m disappointed over Anna.” Zachariah says. “It didn’t seem like such a complicated mission, Castiel. Her existence poses a great threat to us.”

“I know. We were unprepared for the presence of the demons. Especially Alastair.”

Zachariah comes back into the room. He glances curiously at Castiel, and reaches out to take hold of his head. Thick stubby fingers grip his jaw, and he tilts Castiel’s head this way and that. 

“Yes. I can see. Those will take a few days to fade from you and the vessel. Interesting that Alastair should be the one Lilith sends to recover a fallen angel. An important prize, but they caught us on the hop. They tracked her down before we did. Any garden variety demon would have done to capture an essentially human girl.”

Castiel says silent. He can hear what Zachariah isn’t saying. It shouldn’t have taken two angels to find and kill Anna, but she was always a fighter. Strong. There was a time when she ranked above Zachariah, and Castiel knows there was also a time when he was closer to Anna than any other angel was. He remembers her and Gabriel, the both of them fierce as God’s own fire, tearing asunder an army of demons to get to him. 

But the implication is there...he’s failed. Failure is not something that Zachariah tolerates.

“She’ll be difficult to find now. For them as well as us, so for now I guess we can leave her alone. Eventually she’ll turn up and then perhaps we can bring her back into the fold.”

Castiel doesn’t meet his eyes. He knows what will happen to Anna if she is ever misfortunate enough to be taken prisoner by Zachariah. A faithless, disobedient angel is not something that the Host can tolerate. They must relearn their place, or be destroyed.

Castiel has heard rumours. He isn’t sure which fate would be worse.

“Castiel?”

He looks up. Zachariah is staring at him curiously.

“I’m troubled that it seems like Dean lured you and Uriel into a confrontation with the demons. Tell me; do you or do you not have that human under control?”

Castiel hesitates. He must choose his words carefully here. “Dean is...difficult. Stubborn. He does not yet accept that he can save us. He does not think he is worthy.”

“But he doesn’t have a problem with turning on the angel who pulled him out of Hell.”

Castiel falls silent. He can’t deny Zachariah sincerely. He knows that Dean felt pushed into that decision but to try and explain that to Zachariah would make it seem that he, an angel, is questioning Heaven’s will. He also finds it hard to defend what Dean did, even though he understands the motivation, when it ended up with Alastair’s hands around his throat.

But he also can’t forget Dean launching himself into the fight, lashing out at the demon that tortured him in Hell. All the while knowing he had no hope of defeating him.

“I will speak to Dean. He will come to understand.”

“Good. I think his brother is something of a controlling influence on him, Castiel. We might have to consider separating them.”

Castiel almost voices his dissent, loud and firm, but he catches himself in time. He cannot allow Dean and Sam to be parted. Dean would surely turn against them, and break entirely. “I will speak to him,” he repeats, hoping that Zachariah does not take this as a sign that he is challenging him.

“See that you do,” his superior says, and then Castiel is standing on a road he does not recognise, surrounded by trees. He takes a moment to calm himself, lets himself feel the presence of God’s beauty sink into him, then goes in search of his intractable charge.

~~

Rudy Vender was a nice kid. They lunch at the same diner, and an older waitress – kindly, looks a little like Kathy Bates, somebody’s favourite down to earth aunt who probably gives awesome hugs – tells them some things about him.

“He used to work the odd shift in the kitchen,” she says, sipping a coffee and smiling at the memory. “After school, sometimes at weekends. Kept it from his dad. Never did say why but it wasn’t hard to work out.”

“He and his dad didn’t get on?” Dean asks. He isn’t looking at Sam for this, because sometimes Sam can’t separate other people and their father issues from himself and his father issues.

Kathy smiles, but it’s sad. “Rudy’s dad didn’t want him. I remember his mom. She was real pretty, a quiet little thing. I don’t think Rudy was planned, and it was a difficult birth and well.... There weren’t any other family to take Rudy, and they just made the best of a bad situation. Or so everybody thought. So everybody wanted to think.”

Dean has a feeling he knows where this is going. “Nobody told the sheriff?”

“It’s a small town. You can’t change your curtains without everybody knowing about it before you’re finished putting the new ones up. But Rudy was never going to say anything, and this job was letting him get enough money to get him and Zoe away from here. That was his plan. He used to tell me sometimes when he was washing up. They were saving some money and when they had enough they were just going to go.”

Sam leans forward a little, drawing her attention. “So what happened? If they had money, why did they end up in the Williams house?”

Kathy fingers the rim of the cup. “Sweetie, I just don’t know. I can guess, but.... I told Rudy not to tell his father about his plans. He’d have beaten the notion right out of him in more ways than one. Maybe it got bad that night. They needed someplace to stay and then head out in the morning. And they never got the chance to leave.”

Dean does glance at Sam now. Everything they’ve heard and read so far suggests that maybe that house has seen evil rather than done evil. Maybe it’s like the sheriff said – bad shit happens. It doesn’t make it the Amityville House.

“Do you think something happened to them in that house? Something....” He trails off, letting her reach her own conclusions.

Kathy leans in, pats his arm. “Honey, I don’t think that house was haunted. I think it maybe is now, and I hope that wherever David Vender put Rudy and Zoe after he’d finished with them, he at least gave them a decent burial.”

She goes back to work after that, and the brothers are left standing on the sidewalk next to the Impala. 

“Maybe Bobby’s friend had it wrong,” Sam suggests. “Dean, everything points to people being behind all this. People killing other people, people committing suicide, people just ... running away when things got too much.”

Dean nods, but he still can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to it than this. He’s never believed in coincidences. Never. And there are a whole lot of coincidences around that house. 

“I wish we knew who had phoned Bobby.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Dean takes out his phone, starts to dial. Then he stops. “Two options. Someone was with Ellie that night, but she doesn’t sound like she had any friends here. Anybody she’d trust enough to help her, and she certainly didn’t take her boss or the secretary from the Courier along.”

“Okay,” Sam concedes. “So who else would know she’d disappeared so soon after it happened? And think it was weird enough to phone Bobby?”

Dean pockets his phone. He has an idea, but he doesn’t want to go charging in just yet. “Maybe we should take another look at the house.”

~~

If Dean’s right about his little hunch, and Sam agrees he maybe has a point, then they can probably take a chance.

They don’t bother looking up Martha before they drive down to the house. Sam’s glad because he doesn’t want her groping him again if her period of sympathy for his poor broken heart has expired, and he doesn’t like the idea of giving the woman false hope. Even if they were going to write this house up in a book, the only way she’ll sell it is if she knocks the price down to a dollar and then Little Trees gets to host the next Olympic Games.

Even then, he’s not sure this won’t still be the only empty property in town.

So they’ll pick the lock on the back door, have a good uninterrupted look around this time. See if they can’t figure out what could have taken thirteen people and yet not leave an EMF signature behind.

That was the plan, and Sam thinks maybe they should stop making plans for a while.

When they pull in beside the house, there’s already a truck there. It’s old, and beat up, and beneath that dirt might have been red once. Now its primary colour is rust.

They glance at each other, cautious and ready, and Dean’s about to call out when an old guy comes around the house. He dumps a gasoline can at his feet and it tips over but nothing comes out. That’s because the contents are splashed all over the walls of the house, and Sam can smell it now...strong, catching at his throat.

The guy opens the second can and continues throwing the gas against the wood, which soaks it up hungrily. Some of it splashes back on him, but he doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care.

“Hey,” Dean protests, but the old man ignores him.

They run at him, Dean making a grab for the gas can, Sam trying to pin the guy. He’s old, but he’s wiry, and he screams at them.

“No. No! I have to do this. I can’t let it get anybody else!”

Dean manages to wrestle the can from the man’s grip, and recaps it. Sam keeps as tight a hold on the man as he’s able to – he hopes the guy doesn’t have matches or a lighter on him because they’re all covered in gasoline right now and that is a recipe for disaster.

Dean comes back, starts trying to reason with the old guy, and that’s a mistake. The man kicks out, catching Dean in the gut, and the unexpected attack makes Sam stagger backwards. They both go down in a heap, and the other guy struggles out of Sam’s arms, trying to get a hand into his pocket. He pulls out a cheap old lighter, and Sam yells and makes a grab for it.

He gets it in time, but the old guy fights him for it. He claws at Sam’s face, kicks and bites, and Sam can’t do much else than curl in on himself, and yell for Dean.

His brother gets himself together, and hauls the old guy off. “Enough,” he warns, but the fight is over. The old man collapses back against his legs, and sobs quietly. “Enough,” Dean says again, breathing hard, but softer now. 

Sam lies where he is, on his side on the grass, blood pouring from scratch marks on his face. He thinks he should maybe try to get up, but roughing up a guy three times his age wasn’t what he expected of today. He glances at Dean.

“You okay?”

His brother’s a funny shade of grey. Maybe the old guy’s aim was lower than Sam thought. “No.”

“Okay.” Sam moves carefully, finding a dozen or so places where the guy’s feet or bony elbows connected. He turns onto his front, starts to push himself up, and that’s when he sees it. Half hidden in the grass covering the foundations. “Dean?”

Dean comes to join him, but he keeps checking back on their unexpected opponent in case the guy has something else up his sleeve. Like a book of matches this time. “What the fuck is that?”

Sam reaches out, fingers tracing the edge of what is definitely a sigil of some kind. “I don’t know, but I think maybe we should find out.” He takes out his phone, snaps a picture of the sigil, and then gets up in time to see the sheriff’s car pulling in off the road.

“Maybe somebody thinks they should tell me what’s going on here?” he demands.

Dean glances at Sam, and Sam shrugs. What else can they say? They don’t know who this guy is and they’ve got no reason to lie for him, especially since he almost torched them along with the house.

“We wanted another look around,” Dean says. “Got here in time to see this guy getting merry with a couple of cans of gasoline.”

Edgar looks from them to the old man sobbing in the dirt. He goes over, kneels down, and puts his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Dr. Blake. Dr. Blake. I need you to come with me now, okay?”

Blake, Sam mouths to Dean. Of course. Martha did tell them he still lives in town. But she didn’t mention he was a raving psycho.

“This is what I was worried about,” Edgar says. He helps Blake up, doesn’t look at them, but they all know who he’s talking to. “Dredging things up. Making things worse.”

Sam doesn’t see how things could be worse, at least now they’ve found that sigil. “Has it occurred to you that maybe there’s more going on here than you think?” It’s maybe not that smart, trying to draw the man out, but Sam wants to know.

Dean glares at him, Sam can see the ‘hush up, Sammy’ in that look, and he does. Mainly because he doesn’t want to create any more of a barrier to climb across than he has to when he finally gets Dean to talk to him about last night.

The sheriff stares at them, then puts Blake in the back of his car and drives off. 

Sam glares after the car. He’s had enough of this town already. With people vanishing, and kids getting abused, and everybody just grasping for the first forced, rational explanation or just ignoring it altogether. Small fucking towns.

Dean doesn’t say anything, at first. He’s looking at the house, green eyes scanning the walls, the roof. “There’s more,” he says, suddenly, and Sam follows his gaze.

Two more sigils, looking burnt into the wood, are just under the eaves. Unless you were looking for them, you’d never see them. They’re too far up for a clear picture, but they don’t look that different from the one on the foundations.

“Let’s split up,” Sam says, “see if there’s any more.”

So they do, and they find seven in all. Two of them are new, appearing just above the first one Sam saw. They definitely weren’t there before, so whatever is happening, it’s picking up the pace.

“Bobby,” Dean says, and at least that they can agree on.

~~

They email Bobby the pictures of the sigils, and Sam searches on his laptop while they know Bobby is doing the same thing at home, only with his endless volumes of esoteric tomes rather than Google. Dean goes out for food, more as an excuse to get some space to think rather than because either of them is really hungry. 

Maybe he’d be as well just sitting down and telling Sam what’s getting at him. The whole thing with the demons. He’s been shitty to Sam and he knows it. It’s not like he was the sole voice of dissension when Sam was putting the plan to them. It seemed like the way to go at the time, the only way to go. They weren’t exactly tripping over options. 

He could say he didn’t expect it to end up with Cas grappling with Alastair. But what did he think was going to happen? He knows Alastair. From the minute he showed up in that church, he knew Alastair was involved. Alastair loves to break things, people. Castiel must have been like the sweet smell of potential bloodshed to him.

And Dean’s the one that put Cas in the same room with _that_. He wouldn’t blame Cas if he never showed up again, except he remembers what Cas said when he first showed up in person. Or in Jimmy’s person. 

Heaven has work for Dean, and that means Cas is stuck with him.

He gets sandwiches for Sam and a burger for himself, and a couple of cokes. He left the car at the motel and it means he gets the chance to walk, and think about whether or not what they did is just going to prove to Castiel, and his brother dick angels, that they were right about Sam. Not that he plans to blab to Cas that Sam came up with the plan, but he kind of thinks Cas probably knows. The whole mind reading shtick. 

The angels know that Sam is screwing Ruby anyway, so they probably know everything else there is to know.

He turns the corner, and almost bangs right into the angel in question.

“Fuck,” he breathes, sure that sometimes Cas pulls shit like that on purpose. There’s a lot somebody with no apparent social knowledge can get away with.

“Dean,” Cas says, sombre as always.

“You ok?” Dean asks, before he can stop himself. Not their usual greeting. Usually he’s telling Cas to get lost, come back when he’s had some sleep, or some food, or he feels up to dealing with angels and the apocalypse. Which usually takes a beer or two.

Castiel stares at him, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think the angel’s a little surprised at the concern. Which just helps Dean feel shittier than he did before. 

“We need to talk,” Cas says. 

“Well, we’re kind of in the middle of something.” Other than a food run, which is probably what the angel thinks as he glances at the restaurant bag in his arms. 

“This can’t wait.”

“When can it ever,” Dean says, but surrenders to Cas tapping his forehead, and then they’re standing someplace with a lot of trees. Dean gets the impression of altitude, but he can’t actually see a drop or anything, so he’s cool with it just now. He knows Sam probably isn’t expecting him to race back to the motel room, so he has some time before his little brother enters freak out mode.

“Alright, what is it?” He suddenly feels a little stupid standing there holding takeout, so he folds the top of the bag down and finds a fair sized rock to put it on. He’s cold as well; he fastens up his jacket, and looks at Castiel and waits.

This is probably going to be about the same thing he isn’t talking to Sam about, and suddenly that’s the conversation he’d rather be having.

For someone who snatched him off the street, Cas suddenly doesn’t seem in any great hurry to spit it out. He has his back to Dean, and Dean figures that’s worth something, right? If Cas will offer him his back. Unless the angel’s doing it because he just doesn’t want to look at him.

“My superiors are questioning your loyalty to us.”

Dean can feel his eyebrows climb into his hair. “My loyalty. To the angels.” The old anger starts up again, and it feels good – it means he can, for a while at least, let go of the guilt. Probably not at all reasonable of him, but since he can’t deal with one, he can at least get on with the other. “So this is about the whole thing with Anna.”

Castiel’s silence is as good as an affirmative.

“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t feel like just turning her over to you to slaughter, Cas. I don’t care that she decided to become the little black sheep. Fuck, your sister decides to go it alone, you maybe don’t call her for a while if it pisses you that much. You don’t go after her with homicidal intent!”

Castiel turns on him. “You think it’s that simple? You have no idea what she did actually entails. The repercussions. Think on what we are, Dean. What we can do. We owe our very existence to our Father. It is our duty and honour to serve Him and no other. To turn away from Him, to deny his Glory.... You can’t begin to understand it, and you certainly don’t have the right to question.”

Dean’s guilt is fading fast. He’s starting to remember why he went along with that plan in the first place, why Uriel’s threat against Sam only cemented his resolve to see it through. “I’m not your dog,” he tells Cas. “I’m not gonna come when you whistle. I’m not gonna beg, roll over or attack on command. Am I grateful you pulled me out of hell? Yeah, of course. But I know I would have been more grateful if you’d shown up right before Sam got stabbed. That would have been epic timing.”

The resulting silence is stubborn, and Dean knows he’ll end up breaking it. This is a creature that’s existed for millennia. He doubts he can keep this up longer than Cas.

“I didn’t have orders, then,” Cas says. For a minute, he looks just like he did when he brought Dean back from the past, from watching his grandfather die and his mother make the deal that set them all on this path. “I didn’t know you needed me, then.”

Dean looks away, not sure where his anger has gone. “Look, I...I never thought you’d get hurt. During that fight with the demons. There was you, and Uriel, and I figured...you two could handle anything Alastair and those bastards could throw at you. Lesson learned.”

A hint of a smile crosses Castiel’s list but there’s no humour there. It’s cold, and Dean thinks somehow by saying what he’s been dying to, he’s just confirmed the transgression.

“It doesn’t change the fact that you still deceived us. What will it take, Dean? To win your loyalty? To restore your faith? Do you understand how important it is that you trust us?”

Dean can’t look at him now. He hears _us_ , but he knows Castiel means _me_. And he knows what it feels like to be let down by someone you thought you could count on.

But he still can’t bring himself to say it. He wants to trust Cas, he does, but it doesn’t seem like so long ago Castiel was threatening to toss him back into the pit. He doesn’t believe Cas would, but then it also isn’t that long ago that Castiel warned him to rein Sam in. He’s no fan of the carrot and the stick, especially as so far the only thing he’s seen is the stick getting waved over him every time the angels want something from him that they don’t think they’ll get.

“I’ll return you,” Castiel says, like he knows that they could stand here forever and Dean isn’t going to say what he needs to hear. 

Dean shrugs, and lets Cas touch his forehead, and then he’s back at the motel. The bag of food is back in his arms, even though he forgot to pick it up, but Castiel is nowhere to be seen.

~~

When he gets inside, Sam is getting off the phone with Bobby. 

“He tried you first,” Sam says, and it does sound a little like an accusation. “But apparently you were out of range.”

Dean wonders where Cas took him. “Yeah. Bumped into Castiel.”

Sam tenses immediately, looks around like Cas might be hiding behind a piece of furniture or something. 

“Relax, he dropped me off and then back to Angel HQ, I guess.”

“What did he want?”

“To ask me to the prom, Sammy, so you need to help me pick a corsage. What do you think he wanted?”

Sam gets up and opens the bag of food. He takes out his sandwich and a napkin, and sits back down at the table. “Was he pissed?”

Dean thinks about how to answer that one. He hasn’t actually seen Castiel pissed. Not to the extent where things are about to get smote or ripped apart. He has seen him seriously annoyed, if in a quiet angelic fashion. Today, he seemed more....

“Hurt. Offended. Disappointed.” He takes his burger out of the bag, but he’s even less hungry now than he was when he went out earlier. He knows Sammy won’t eat the burger so he dumps it in the trash and settles for gulping down his coke. “Hell, Sammy, we couldn’t come up with anything better?”

Sam puts his sandwich down. “Dean, don’t you think they bear at least part of the blame? There’s not exactly a lot we could do against two angels. Getting them and the demons to duke it out was the only plan that would work. I didn’t get a kick out of seeing Alastair trying to kill Cas, in case you think I did.”

Dean slumps down on the bed. “Yeah, cos I think you’re that much of a douche bag. The point is, we made a choice – a conscious choice – to push Cas into that situation. None of us said it, but we knew there was a good chance it was going to turn out like it did. Angel on demon. Or demon on angel as it turned out.”

“So did he make you apologise?”

“No. He wasn’t there for that. Fucking featherbrain, he was there to warn us that his bosses weren’t too impressed. Anybody else would have kicked the shit out of me. He won’t even take it personally.”

Sam gets his own coke. “You heard what Anna said. I don’t think they can, Dean. Or at least, I don’t think they’re allowed to. Christ, now you’re making me feel guilty. Just knock it off, okay?”

Dean waves a hand at him. “So what did Bobby say?”

At it turns out, not much. Nothing in the books Bobby has matches the sigils identically. A few come close, and they mean things like _brethren_ and _here_ and one even seems like a fucked up version of _sanctuary_ but other than that they’re no further ahead.

“You really think the sheriff’s Bobby’s friend?” Sam says, when they’re done accepting that they’ve got nothing.

Dean nods. “Yeah. It’s the only thing that fits. He didn’t seem all that surprised when we showed up, but I kind of feel he asked Bobby for help because he had to instead of wanted to. I think he believes that house is wrong, and he didn’t know what to do about it.”

“Wait for more people to disappear, from the looks of it,” Sam said. “Anyway, I don’t know where we go from here. Those sigils have to mean something. I don’t know what else is gonna give us a lead here. It’s not ghosts. I can’t think of anything else that makes people vanish without a trace. No remains, no nothing.”

Dean can’t either. He doesn’t bother to ask about their dad’s journal; Sammy finished uploading the contents onto the laptop months ago, so if there was an answer there they’d already be back at the house taking care of this whatever it is.

He hates not knowing what to do. People can die while they’re figuring things out, even though he hopes by now rumour will keep most people away from the house.

“Maybe we should have let Peter Blake burn it after all.”

“And maybe,” Sam disagrees, “at least some of those people that vanished are still alive. Somewhere. We can’t just write them off.”

Dean wonders if Castiel would be willing to drop by, give them the benefit of his experience. If anybody could tell them what the sigils meant, it would be him. But Dean has the feeling they’ve burned that particular angelic bridge. Even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t feel comfortable with getting Castiel half throttled one day and then using him as his phone a friend the next.

“Then we start over,” he says, sitting up. “We go back to the sheriff and we talk to him and to Peter Blake this time too. If there’s anything they know that we don’t, it could be what helps us solve this. And if that doesn’t work, we go back to the house and we sit there until whatever is doing this makes an appearance.”

“And gets us too,” Sam says, but he’s up and grabbing his jacket.

Dean grins, hard and ruthless. “No, Sam. That’s when we get it.”

~~

Edgar sends his deputy out when the Winchesters walk in, and that’s as good an admission as anything. They sit down at his desk, and he mocks them lightly over their cover story. But yeah, it was him that called Bobby.

Sam wants to ask why he waited so long, but it’s not really important. They’re here now, and Edgar takes them back to see Peter Blake.

The doctor is sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the opposite wall like there’s some answer there that he’ll be able to see if he just looks long enough and hard enough. Sam isn’t sure they’re going to get anything out of the old man, but he’s the closest thing to an eye witness they’ve got.

“Do you remember us?” he asks, sitting down next to him, while Dean leans against the other wall. “From back at the house.”

He wants to wave his hand in front of Blake’s face, but he has a feeling now that the doctor is in, just pretending that he’s not. “Dr. Blake,” he insists.

“Peter, knock it off,” Edgar says. “These boys might be able to stop what’s been happening.”

Blake swings around to glare at Sam, the movement so sudden that Sam almost ends up on the floor. “I could have stopped it,” he points out, angrily. “Except these two got in the way. What do you care about it anyway?”

“We care because we spend our lives doing things like this,” Dean says. “Hunting things. It’s not always as simple as burning down a building.”

“No more house, no more people can go inside and vanish,” Blake says. “Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened that night?” Sam says, because the last thing he needs is Dean trying to out-stubborn this guy. “When your wife disappeared?”

Blake glances from them to the sheriff, and Sam catches the nod out of the corner of his eye. He waits, until Blake is ready, and then the old man seems to just cave.

“I’ve told this story so many times. What’s once more? Our things were moved in. We were going to spend a few nights in the house and then go to Las Vegas. She’d always wanted to. I was waiting in bed for her. She wanted to freshen up. And when she’d been gone a while, I went to see what was keeping her. The bathroom door was locked. I kicked it down and she wasn’t there. It was like she’d never been there.”

Sam notices he never says his wife’s name. Maybe this was how he’d coped. Maybe by persuading himself she’d never been _there_ in other ways too.

Edgar signals to them and they follow him out. The cell door stays unlocked; Sam has a feeling Blake’s here more to be kept an eye on than because he poses a risk to anybody.

“You two really think you know what’s going on here?”

They sit down again, and Dean says, “Not right now, but we will do. Look, what happened to that reporter?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have called Bobby Singer. Ellie was difficult. She never made much of an attempt to settle in here. Always convinced it was just a matter of time before her old paper wised up and asked her back, or some other hot shot editor realised the talent that was wasting away here in Little Trees. If’d she let herself, she could have had an okay life here.”

He sounds almost wistful, and Sam feels like ‘with me’ should have been at the end of that sentence. But from the little they’ve heard of Ellie Trainer she wasn’t about to let anything tie her to this town.

“You found her car, right?” he asks.

“Out back of the house. Looks like she picked the lock. Her bag was upstairs, right outside the closet. That’s where those kids disappeared, too. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence. There’s no way that it is.”

“Tell me something,” Dean says. “The kid, Rudy. His dad beating on him?”

Edgar folds his arms, leans back in his chair. “I never saw any sign of abuse. Nothing I could act on. And Rudy swore blind his dad never touched him.”

“But he’d have crawled over broken glass to get out of here.”

“He’s not the only kid to want to do that. Most of the kids here make life plans that start with ‘leaving town’. They’re not all being abused.”

Sam shakes his head. The sheriff will happily accept that something in that house is taking people away, with nothing more to go on than an abandoned car and a couple of bags, but he’ll ignore the fact that Rudy Vender wanted to leave home so bad he worked a secret job to squirrel away some money and hoped his dad never found out.

“We need to get inside the house again,” is all he says. “Whatever’s going on, we won’t solve it otherwise.”

Edgar nods. “I’ll speak to Martha. Don’t get her all het up with tales of books that’ll attract interest to that place. I’d as soon nobody bought it or moved in there. But I don’t want you two getting her hopes up.”

“I’m coming.” Peter Blake is standing at the cell door, pale but determined. “And before anybody tries to talk me out of it, you can’t.”

Dean and Sam glance at each other. Maybe he’ll remember something, but neither of them seems to have the patience to waste time trying to convince the old man to stay behind.

~~

Unsurprisingly, Martha isn’t too keen on them looking around. For one thing, she doesn’t believe that there is anything wrong with the house. Other than people who’ve no business being there keep trespassing. And she looks like she wants to kill Peter Blake. 

Dean can relate. His jewels still ache. And Martha’s got a lot of money in that house. He reckons probably so much that her less than booming property business might be FUBAR’d if Peter had actually managed to get that lighter off Sam.

But right now the five of them are standing staring at the west wall of the house, and the twenty or so sigils that have appeared charred into the wood since they last stood there.

“I want whoever did that,” Martha says, voice tight like she’s forcing it out between clenched teeth. “I want them arrested and tried and I want them punished. How did they get them so far up there?” 

The sigils are nearly running in a straight column up towards the roof. Dean wants to tell her he doesn’t think this is the work of vandals – that no bored teenagers dragged a cherry picker out here to fuck around with her – but he knows whatever he says, Martha won’t believe him.

“Okay, I think it’s time we bit the bullet here,” he says, and motions to Sam to keep the other three busy. He jogs around the back of the building, ignoring Martha’s protests, and looks up at the sky. Stupid because who knows if Heaven is physically there or physically _anywhere_ but he can’t do this without looking up.

“Castiel! Cas!” He looks around, wanting to make sure that no one’s sneaked back here. He doesn’t want to waste time to explain that he has an angel hovering around sometimes, and Castiel is so peculiar that he just knows no explanation he could give would sound even a little plausible.

After a few moments, with no fluttering of wings and sudden appearances of holy tax accountants, he starts to think Cas is either busy or ignoring him. He can understand both, but this is important and he needs the angel to get his feathered ass down here.

“Cas, if you’re sulking, I need you to quit it and come help us with this.” He winces as he says it; way to encourage the huffy angel to show up. What was it he’d told Cas? I’m not your dog. I won’t come when you whistle. Well, he’d just puckered up his lips and blew. 

“What,” Castiel says from behind him, and Dean does not squeal like a little girl.

“Oh, you are speaking to me,” he manages, but he grabs Castiel’s wrist before the angel can disappear on him again. “Can you spare me five minutes? I swear, that’s it. I just need you to look at something.”

But Castiel is staring up at the building like he’s seen it before somewhere. Before Dean can stop him, he starts to walk around it, back to where Sam’s waiting with Edgar, Blake and Martha.

“Cas,” Dean warns, but it’s too late. By the time he catches the angel up, he’s ignoring the other humans and has his eyes fastened on the wall. Another three or four sigils have appeared, and Castiel reaches out to run his fingers along the edge of one. He pulls his hand back sharply, and Dean’s there, grabbing at it.

“Lemme see,” he insists. The skin of Castiel’s fingers are red raw, but as Dean watches they start to heal. “They’re demonic, right?”

“Demonic?” It’s Martha, her voice just pitched under a shriek. “Sheriff, I want all of these people out of here now. I can’t believe you’re indulging in this nonsense. What is going on?”

Edgar pinches the bridge of his nose with his forefingers, shuts his eyes like he’s the weariest guy in the world. “Martha. Shut up.” He drops his hand with a sigh, looks from Sam to Dean to Castiel. “So. Who’s this? Another brother?”

“Dean is not my brother,” Castiel says. 

“He’s....” Dean hesitates. The apocalypse isn’t common knowledge. It doesn’t have to be; in fact, it’s better if it’s not. It has nothing to do with these people, so they don’t need to know about it and he can’t think of a single explanation that doesn’t involve angels and the end of the world. “He’s my boyfriend.”

Sam goes through a variety of shades, and ends up with a pink tinge to his cheeks.

Edgar cocks an eyebrow at him. “Right. Was he hiding in your pocket? Boy, don’t fuck with me.”

Castiel’s the one looking from Dean to Sam to the sheriff this time. “Dean?”

“I haven’t been,” Dean hisses. One of these days, if they live that long, he’s going to teach Castiel about taking things so goddamn literally. “Look, forget amateur hour. There’s more of these things every time we look at this place. Bobby doesn’t know what they are, but I’m betting they’re more than scenery. People have been disappearing out of this house, Cas. Could these be behind it?”

Castiel returns his attention to the sigils. “No. There is no power in these signs. They are...markers. But they should not be here.”

“In this town?”

“In this plane of existence.”

“That helps,” Sam says. “Markers for what, Cas? And if they shouldn’t be here, why are they?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t know, Sam. But they are demonic in origin.”

“I’ve had enough,” Martha snaps. She shoves Sam aside and starts for the door. “You people are all mad. Maybe there’s something wrong with this town but there is nothing wrong with this house. I’ll prove it to you.”

By the time Dean reaches the door, she’s unlocked it and ran inside. Dean makes to go after her, Sam on his heels, but Castiel has a hand on them both before they can breach the threshold. He pulls them back, pushes them behind him effortlessly.

“No,” he says, and the last time Dean heard him talk like that he was telling Alastair and his demonic entourage to fuck off before he and Uriel went to town on them. “I’ll bring her back.”

He vanishes and Dean wishes he wouldn’t do that in mixed company.

Blake is staring open mouthed at where Castiel was standing. He looks around like maybe Castiel just performed some crazy sleight of hand with himself, like he might be hiding behind Sam – well, Sam’s almost big enough. Dean hopes this isn’t the thing that pushes the old guy over the edge. 

Edgar has one hand rested on his sidearm, like he’s not sure if it’s going to be of help or not but he wants to be ready just in case. “Boyfriend, huh.”

Fuck my life, Dean thinks. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure. You two have some explaining to do. And maybe, so does Bobby.”

“Dean,” Sam says.

“Yes, Sam.” He hopes Sam isn’t going to come up with some comment or suggestion about Cas, because he doesn’t need anything else to fuck up his day right now.

“Don’t you think they should be out by now?”

Dean glances at the door, stupidly, like he expects to see Cas standing there with Martha in hand. The doorway’s empty, and so is the hall. He leans in enough to peek towards the stairs. Nothing there either. “Cas?”

There’s no reply. No one answers him, and he doesn’t hear the sound of wing beats that sometimes tells him Castiel is on the way. 

He slumps down against the wall, not sure how things always manage to get so screwed up around him. “Bad to worse to fucked up beyond belief,” he mutters, and isn’t sure if he’s grateful or pissed when Sam doesn’t disagree.

~~

So, it’s plan time again, and Dean says it like that’s a dirty word he doesn’t ever want to use again. He kicks the wall of the house after he gets up, because it’s just swallowed his angel. Really, he wants to be running in there, but it won’t help any of them if it gets him too. 

Cas is an angel. He’ll be okay. At least until they figure this thing out.

“You two should go,” Dean says. 

Edgar’s standing in the doorway, close enough to see inside without actually touching the house. “Nice try. If those two don’t come out of there, Winchester, it’s your fault. I’m beginning to regret ever phoning Bobby. He said he knew someone who could deal with this, not make it worse.”

Dean ignores the criticism. Right now, the only thing he cares about is getting Castiel out of that house alive and unharmed. He can’t believe that twice in twenty four hours he’s led Castiel into something like this. It wouldn’t surprise him if Cas believes he’s doing it on purpose.

He hopes Cas is at least alive to have a chance to think that. 

“You’re not going in there,” Sam says.

“I know,” Dean says.

“I mean it, Dean.”

“I know! Fuck, Sammy, I’m not an idiot. But we need to do something.”

Sam’s next suggestion is to try Ruby. It was no newsflash that the sigils were demonic, not really, and maybe she can shed some light on them. Hell, maybe she can even go inside and bring Cas and Martha out, though Dean has a feeling they’re not actually in that house anymore. 

Dean vetoes that idea. The last time Ruby was in the same room as an angel, it was Uriel and Dean ended up taking a tire iron to the fucker’s back when he had her pinned to a wall. He can’t imagine her falling over herself to help save Uriel’s brother, and he isn’t sure he wants them owing her any more than they already do.

He also isn’t sure he can trust her not to take advantage of whatever situation Castiel’s gotten himself into - _I’ve gotten him into_. He can imagine her coming out, sighing, saying ‘I tried but it was too late’.

“Well if we don’t ask Ruby, what are we going to do?”

There’s only one other person Dean thinks might be able to help them here, or at least they should tell about what’s happened. Dean doesn’t know how it works in Heaven. How long an angel has to be missing before someone thinks to go look for them. But he’d rather they tell Uriel than have him show up looking for Castiel, and Dean really doesn’t know what else to do.

“How are you even going to contact him?” Sam protests. “You think you can just yell on him like you do Cas and he’ll just show up?”

“One way to find out.”

~~

Castiel knows, in an instant, that he is in peril.

To Jimmy Novak’s eyes, he is standing in a corridor – on the second floor of the house he entered to recover the woman. To his own eyes, his _own_ eyes, it is still a hallway. But the walls are bulging as though something enormous is moving behind them, trying to push through. 

The woman, Martha Lott – in a moment he knows all there is to know of her, the sometimes dubious gift of angels – is screaming. Her hands are over her ears, her eyes squeezed shut, and her screams are loud and continuous.

He might be an angel, but it’s starting to grate on his nerves.

“Be quiet,” he tells her. This place, this house – it’s wrong, and they are someplace they shouldn’t be. He reaches out, tries to find the place he _was_ , but all he can sense is the pressure and the darkness shifting around him. Without a doubt, he cannot leave here as easily as he came in.

The sensation of two different places that are inherently the same but overlapped – the way he can look at his surroundings and see the variations...it’s disorientating. And Martha’s screams are not making it any more bearable.

He reaches out, presses two fingers to her forehead, and catches her when she slumps against him. 

Determined to at least try, Castiel concentrates on Dean. Dean’s soul, despite what the human thinks, is bright and fierce. Its strength and brilliance once led Castiel straight to it through the leagues of Hell, singling it out among the rest of the damned. He hopes it will be a beacon to him again, something to follow – this time leading him out of an evil place instead of into it.

But all he can feel is the darkness around him, stifling his Grace and his power.

And then, something else.

Directly ahead of him is a door. He pushes his thoughts against it, gets the feeling of a room of a sort. Smaller than those on either side of him, hidden behind closed doors, but large enough to contain...something. Someone?

Castiel shakes Martha and she comes to, dazed and trembling.

“We’re going to die here.” Clearly, Castiel is not the only one aware of how wrong this place is.

He makes sure she will stand without him, and approaches the door. He opens it quickly, readying himself for whatever might be on the other side.

Martha screams again as something lurches at him out of the closet, clawed hands going straight for his throat.

~~

If the appearance of Castiel shocked the hell out of Blake and the sheriff, Uriel suddenly showing up has them practically shitting themselves. Especially as the first thing he does is to grab Dean by the shoulders and shake him.

“I’m not Castiel,” he growls. “I’m not at your beck and call, and you should know, Winchester, that neither is he. He may tolerate you and your demon spawn sibling, but I have issue with you treating my brother like a lap dog.”

Dean wriggles free angrily. “Get the fuck off me, junkless. Like I’d be yelling for you if I had any other option? Seen Anna recently?”

Sam groans. Dean just can’t help himself, has to poke the wound just to make sure it’s going to hurt. “Uh, Uriel, Castiel’s in trouble.” If anything will distract the larger angel from tearing Dean’s arms off and beating him to death with them, it’ll be that.

Uriel turns furious eyes onto him. “Explain yourself.”

Sam takes a step back, involuntarily. Having Uriel’s stare on him feels like slowly being crushed. There are eons behind those eyes, and a cold sense of judgement. He can kind of see what the angels see when they look at him, and he almost wants to run in shame. Almost.

But he’s a Winchester, and Winchesters don’t run.

“This house...it’s marked by demonic sigils. People are vanishing inside it, and Castiel went in to get someone out. Now he’s vanished too.”

Uriel glances at the house, looks like he’s about to pull a Cas on them, and Dean grabs at his arm. Not that Sam thinks he personally cares what happens to Uriel but he’s their best chance at getting Castiel out of there.

Uriel glares at Dean like he’s entering ‘about to smite’ mode. 

“I think it’s had its fill of angel for today,” Dean says.

Uriel looks like he’s about to laugh. “Dean Winchester. How did I ever manage before you were born to prove such an irritating little bastard to angels and demons alike?”

~~

Castiel catches hold of the hands that grab at him, stopping their impetus easily. He locks his fingers about the wrists, and shakes their owner until she yelps and curses at him.

“Bastard!” But she stops fighting, as though realising that Castiel is no threat to her. “You...you.... God, I’m sorry, I thought you were it.”

He doesn’t understand, but there’s no time to question. Martha Lott is at his back, staring at the other woman.

“Ellie. Ellie Trainer?”

“Martha. Got you too, huh.”

Castiel glances between them. “Explain.”

Martha doesn’t seem to like Ellie very much. She points an accusing finger at her. “She was trespassing and then disappeared. And now we’re here, too. And I don’t even know where here is anymore! What did you do, Ellie?”

Ellie stares in astonishment for a moment, but then her temper returns sudden as a flash of lightening. “Firstly, I think we have bigger problems than a little B&E, don’t you? And I don’t know where the hell we are, either, Martha. And I sure didn’t do anything to cause this. You’re the one who owns this house. Maybe it’s more a question of what did _you_ do?”

Martha screams in anger and lashes out. Castiel catches her hand and shoves her back hard, then turns to deal with Ellie if need be. There’s no time for this, for dealing with human stupidity. But Ellie has herself under control. She raises her hands to him in a gesture of surrender, and he nods, satisfied.

Martha looks accusingly at him, rubbing her wrist, even though Castiel knows he didn’t use enough force to hurt her.

“I’m what passes for the local news talent in this town,” Ellie says, randomly.

Castiel cocks his head at her. Clearly, some kind of introduction. Dean would be proud, he thinks, aware he is now using sarcasm on himself.

“Castiel,” he returns. 

Ellie waits, as though expecting something more. Finally, she says, “And what brings you to Hell House, Castiel no-second-name?”

Castiel looks around them. “This isn’t Hell.”

Ellie smiles, but Castiel can see her fear simmering inside. “But maybe something like it. Have you seen it yet?”

“There’s someone else here?”

Ellie laughs coldly. “Why do you think I was hiding in there? Yeah, I know, not the best of bolt holes but I couldn’t find any other way out of here. And it’s not a someone, it’s more of a.... Honestly, I don’t have a clue.”

Martha almost leans against the wall, then seems to remember Castiel’s warning. She hugs herself, sniffling quietly. “We’re going to die here. I don’t understand. This is just a house. Everybody keeps going on about people vanishing and something evil here. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t under-“

Ellie steps forward, and slaps her once – hard. Castiel holds, unsure if this is a repeat of their earlier fight. But Martha shuts up, although her hand goes to her cheek and she gives Ellie an accusing, hurt look. Ellie responds by gripping Martha’s shoulders. “We are not going to die here. We’re going to stick together, and we’re going to get out of this house. Got it?”

Martha nods, and then Ellie turns to him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to know more than we do. Care to share?”

Castiel thinks back to the demonic sigils on the house. A symptom, he knows, not the cause. He looks at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. As much as he can see them, they’re like a cover. There’s something else, rotting and tainted, beneath the shell of the house. He can’t explain it but it’s so achingly familiar than he feels a surge of frustration.

“What is that?” Martha says, suddenly.

Castiel turns. From this end of the hall, all he can see of the first floor is the top few stairs, and then darkness beyond. But he can see something staring at them, the top of it just visible above that last step. Baleful eyes glow yellow in the shadows, and then it takes another step, and Castiel sees more of it, but still not enough. Then it opens its mouth, a dark pit, and howls at them.

“That’s why I was hiding in the closet,” Ellie says. 

~~

Uriel paces around the house, once, twice, and on the third pass, Dean decides enough is enough. He dials Bobby and heads back to the car while the phone rings. By the time Bobby answers, Dean has pulled an old backpack out of the trunk. He keeps the phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear while he packs weapons and blessed items, and anything else that might help into the bag.

As he packs, he tells Bobby what’s happened. He doesn’t expect Bobby to be all that sympathetic. Bobby has no reason to like Castiel. The night they met, Castiel knocked him out. He’s threatened to throw Dean back into Hell, and has a habit of showing up at Bobby’s unannounced.

If there was a rock salt that worked on angels, Dean knows Bobby would be bulk ordering the stuff and spreading it through the house like sawdust in a meat packer’s. 

But Bobby doesn’t know Castiel, not really. Dean supposes he doesn’t either, but he does know that Cas dragged him from Hell. He might have threatened to toss him back, but Dean knows Cas had just come from a battle. He’d just lost family and Dean was kind of in his face. And despite the threat, Dean’s still here with his feet on Terra Firma. Cas held Uriel back and the more Dean thinks about it, the more he’s sure Castiel didn’t know about Uriel’s threat to toss Sam into Hell to get Dean’s co-operation.

And Castiel came because he called, hurt and huffy or not, and now he’s in trouble.

He doesn’t say all this to Bobby, but he thinks the older man gets the gist of it anyway. But Bobby’s no further ahead; like Castiel more or less said this doesn’t make any sense. There’s no obvious tie between the sigils and the disappearances, except that the increasing frequency they’re showing up with suggests that whatever this is, it’s accelerating.

Bobby warns him not to do anything stupid, and Dean hangs up.

They’re out of options. Stupid’s all he’s got right now. He grabs the bag, and starts back to the house, wondering how exactly he’s going to swing this past Sam.

~~

Castiel opens the closet door, and shoves Ellie inside. He grabs hold of Martha, and pushes her in next, and then slams the door closed behind her. He hears Ellie’s yell of protest, but ignores her words. He presses his hand to the door, mutters a ward under his breath and feels the blessing sink into the wood. It might be fruitless here, but he will not know unless the thing tries to enter.

Despite being more than a thousand years in existence, Castiel still doesn’t know what it is.

It is tall. Gangly, almost. Its arms drag across the floor as it advances towards him, in a lumbering gait. It seems ill put together, as though cobbled into one body from a variety of parts. But it’s the taint that Castiel struggles with. It’s everywhere, all around him, the feeling of wrongness nearly overwhelming. But it is concentrated in this creature that is coming at him, in the arms now reaching for him.

Castiel warns the women to cover their ears. He doesn’t know if they hear him – Martha is screaming again, and it is suddenly cut off, muffled. He lets his true voice sound out, hoping it will be sufficient to drive this thing back.

It does give it pause, cause it some pain. The walls of the house shake, and where plaster falls Castiel sees a seething darkness in its wake. It seems to bubble, but it increases the sensation of something cloying and suffocating.

He can’t bear it here.

Then the thing is at him again, and this time its hands make contract, and Castiel’s scream is a mix of his own voice and Jimmy’s. Its hands seem to be everywhere, moving from his shoulders to his wrists, to his neck. Finally they settle on his wings, wings he didn’t realise he’d revealed until then, bearing him to his knees just by the force of its grip. Desperate, Castiel grips it back, and pushes his Grace through his touch. 

The thing howls and screams, and lets him go. It retreats much faster than it advanced, dragging itself backwards along the floor, sliding down the stairs and into the blackness below.

Castiel falls forward, trying to ignore the pain that pulses through him. It is an agony he has rarely known, but his wings are on fire, and it’s spreading through to the vessel. Jimmy moans within him, and Castiel tries to buffer him from the pain, but every inch of this form and his own feels flayed open.

“Castiel. Castiel, what happened? Oh, my God!”

A hand reaches down to cup his face, encouraging him to lift his head from the floor. Ellie looks down at him, face torn between confusion and concern. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” she says, but not harshly. “But first, I think we better do something about your wings.”

Castiel offers no protest as Ellie turns him over, and helps him to his feet.

~~

They take shelter in one of the rooms. Martha has retreated into herself, and Castiel wonders if she will ever recover from what she has seen here. She does not have the resilience of the Winchesters, or of Ellie. 

Ellie, who has encouraged him to sit down while she checks his wings.

“So. Angel.”

He is surprised at her quick acceptance of his existence, but she goes on to remind him that they are apparently trapped in a house with some kind of evil monster after them. In a house that eats people. It’s not much of a jump to other things existing as well.

Then she apologises for calling him a thing.

“It’s like...it’s like you got some of it on your wings.”

Castiel wishes he could see the damage for himself. He still isn’t sure how the women aren’t blinded by his actual wings being visible, any more than he knows how his true voice didn’t deafen them. This place, whatever it is, is diminishing him somehow. That creature should have been destroyed outright by his voice, and definitely by his touch. Instead it was him that was almost destroyed.

He winces as Ellie touches a sensitive part of his wing. For whatever reason, the taint does not affect her. “It looks almost burned through. Castiel, I don’t know what to do to help.”

He stands up, and she follows. “Once we leave here, they should heal by themselves.”

Ellie chuckles. “Once we leave here. You don’t doubt, do you.”

What can he say? To admit doubt is perilous for an angel. Faith is their cornerstone. Faith in God. In the Grace that he channels through them, that he made them of. It is faith that lets them do his Will. Faith that lets them exist.

“We will get out of here.” If nothing else, he knows that Dean will not give up on them so easily. He is stubborn. To a fault, more often than not, but it is his nature not to give in. That will serve them and him well.

It is not in Castiel’s nature to give in, either. With an effort, he retracts his wings, and focuses on any damage to the vessel. His wrists ache, and anywhere the creature found bare skin, but the damage is less there than with his wings. It seems only angels are hurt by its touch. Or vessels containing angels.

“I still wish I knew where here was.” Ellie crosses to Martha. The other woman has wedged herself into a corner. She sits quietly, as though afraid to bring attention to her presence. “This isn’t what I expected when I came here.”

“Why did you?” Castiel asks. He doubts it has relevance, but he has observed that this is what humans do. When they are afraid or upset or unhappy. They talk, as though the act of sharing themselves somehow distracts them from their situation. At the same time he stretches out with his Grace, testing the building, aware that even if they are no longer on the same plane as the Winchesters, they must be somewhere. He even calls out to his brothers, but he doesn’t feel the connection with them that he did before.

It feels incredibly lonely not to feel their thoughts in his head, to hear them singing. For the first time there is near silence. He hears something, but it is so far off as to be unrecognisable.

“I wanted to find out what happened to those kids, and everybody else that vanished here. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not as philanthropic as it sounds. I figured if I got a good story out of it, I might get my old job back. And this time, I’d stay out of other women’s yards.”

Castiel glances at her, sensing a deep shame. 

“You can hear my confession later,” she says, and he only realises she is teasing him when she smiles. “You have any ideas how we can get out of here? I’m guessing the front door isn’t an option.”

Castiel shakes his head. He does not think any door will lead them back to where they were. He glances at the wall, watching as one of the sigils he saw outside when Dean first summoned him slowly appears on the wallpaper. He thinks again to their meaning. 

In the endless battle for human souls, it made sense for the angels to garrison on Earth. 

Perhaps it made sense for the demons to do the same. It’s always been suspected, but just as they took great care to hide their garrisons’ existence from demons, their enemies must have done the same for not once has any angel ever found a demonic garrison.

That is not what this is. Regardless of where they are now, Castiel would know if any demon had been here within the past thousand years. 

But perhaps a garrison is what this used to be. He can think of no other explanation. An abandoned demonic stronghold then. But the house? The house is much more recent. He wonders if it was built, either by ignorance or design, over the location of the garrison. 

Possible as it might be, it doesn’t explain the disappearances, or how they are now trapped here, or the thing that pursues them.

“We will need help to escape,” he tells Ellie, and hopes that Dean has at least thought to call for Uriel and tell him what has transpired.

~~

“What? What? Just, no, Dean. No way.” Sam’s like a wall of muscle and bone when he gets in Dean’s way, face switching from stunned to stubborn in the two seconds it takes him to realise what Dean is doing.

“Give me an option,” Dean challenges. Castiel still hasn’t made a reappearance. All angel-Ken has done is walk around the house a few times, and Dean wants to ask if maybe Uriel’s thinking of putting in an offer. Of course, unless they can get Martha back, it’s moot. 

“Give me time,” Sam retorts. “We’ll get them out, Dean. But this isn’t like _Poltergeist_. You’re not going in there with a rope around your waist and me holding onto the other end.”

Something acid threatens to spew out then, and Dean has to bite back on it. He wants to say, I know, because lately I don’t know if you’d hold on to it. And that’s shit. Sam wouldn’t let go even if the rope tore his fingers off at the knuckles. But then Sam has been a little harder lately. A little colder. Like a knife that got sharper and Dean doesn’t remember seeing that happening.

Probably because he was elsewhere at the time, and if this was how Sam coped then he can’t complain. But he’s back now, and so Sam can stop making schemes that shove people into situations and he can stop being so fucking ruthless with balancing the plus and minus columns.

Dean’s sure there was a time that even super logical Sam would be packing a bag with the rest of their stuff and standing ready to back Dean’s play. 

“Don’t be a little fool,” Uriel says. He’s suddenly standing beside Sam. “You won’t get them out that way. All that will happen is you’ll end up trapped there yourself.”

“At least I’m doing something, not wondering about doing the place up and moving in.”

He sometimes forgets that while Castiel tolerates his mouth, Uriel doesn’t tolerate anything. The sheriff is at his side suddenly, hand on his gun. Uriel looks at him with disdain.

“Let’s everybody keep this civil,” Edgar says, and Dean wants to warn him off. Despite people appearing and disappearing, and talk of angels and demons and you name it, Edgar is still acting like everybody here was born in New York, or Maine or Bumfuck, Alaska, and no one has wings or a smite-happy outlook on life.

The weirder, the more God-awful the situation gets, the more he’s handling like it a drunken marital dispute outside the local hoe-down. 

Dean’s pretty sure Uriel will take that gun away from him and make him eat it.

He breathes a sigh of relief when Uriel looks away from the sheriff; he can see the angel’s pretty much cut him out of the exchange, and that’s a good thing. “If you’re in there, Castiel will be forced to protect you as well as the woman. He takes his responsibilities seriously.”

Ouch. Dig. Dean almost snaps back, but he checks himself. Cas is stuck in that house, in who knows what kind of trouble. There’s no time for witty back chat. 

“If you go in, you’ll vanish too. So if we can’t go in, and they clearly can’t get out, how do we fix this?”

Uriel glances at the sigils running over the walls. Every inch is covered now. In some places, they even overlap. It could be Dean’s imagination, but in those places, he thinks he can see the wall...softening somehow. Turning a little black, like the house is starting to rot.

“I don’t know,” Uriel says.

Any other time, Dean would crow over that. But not today.

~~

It is not in Castiel’s nature to be impatient. He’s lived longer than any human on the planet, than a hundred of their life spans combined, but he also is not given to waiting when he does not need to.

With the women behind him, certain they are safer with him than by themselves, they venture back into the hall. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Uriel. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Dean. It’s simply that he believes in exploring all his options. If there is a way out of this place, he won’t find it by waiting on rescue to come.

They reach half way down the hall, when Castiel realises leaving the room was a mistake. Going in there at all was a mistake.

The creature that lives here has not been satisfied to wait and lick its wounds. 

It crashes out of a room ahead of them, howling in hunger. Castiel lunges at it, anticipating the pain of contact, but it lashes out at him before he can do anything more. He is flung back, slamming hard into the wall, dislodging the plaster. It rains down, exposing more of the blackness beyond, and Castiel groans at the nausea that grips him. A chill sinks deep inside, and he wants nothing more than to curl in on himself, try to find some way of insulating himself from this place before it ruins him completely.

He is on his hands and knees, trying to find the strength to rise, when he hears a choked screaming.

He looks up to see Martha has made a very foolish mistake. She has tried to run past the creature, and it has caught her. And now, Castiel thinks he knows what has happened to the others who vanished into this house. He can only watch, listen to Ellie screaming now that Martha can’t, as it shoves her against the wall. Its form seems to lose solidity, and Castiel can do nothing as it literally pours itself into her, a dark flood forcing its way into her mouth.

It takes only moments, but they seem to last forever. Then Martha falls to the floor. She flails, and shudders, and gradually her skin blackens. Not all at once. When she gets up, and starts towards them, only half of her face is beyond recognition. The other half is sickeningly human, but the wheezy moans she makes as she reaches for them have no place coming from a living breathing thing.

Ellie is sobbing, but she grabs at Castiel’s arm and hauls him halfway to his feet. “Get up. Get fucking up, now, now, come on.”

He stands, sways, not sure how much longer it will be before this house, this place, smothers his Grace entirely. It might as well do it now for all the good his power is here.

Ellie drags him back to the room, shoves him in, and slams her back against the door.

“She was right,” she pants. “We are going to die here.”

Castiel knows she’s wrong. They aren’t going to die here. The likelihood is that their ultimate fate will be far, far worse.

~~

Between the three of them, and it’s a pow-wow Dean never in his life expected to be a part of, they come to some conclusions.

Castiel and Martha aren’t in that house anymore.

It’s a gateway to somewhere, not to Hell or they’d know about it. This town would probably be overrun by demons at best, or every beast in the books at worst. 

The only way they’re going to find out where it’s a gateway to is to use it.

That brings problems of its own. As Sam’s quick to point out, they were in there earlier and nothing happened. Martha and the sheriff and his deputy were all in there before and they didn’t vanish. It took Alison Blake, but not her husband. The house is taking people either completely at random or with specific purpose in mind. Except if some people are palatable and others aren’t, then why did it not eat Martha the first time but grabbed her the second?

Dean’s sick of questions. But that’s all they seem to have here.

“The entire house is covered in those sigils now,” he points out. “I think it’s got over its fussy eater stage. Look, I’m going in there and it will definitely take me. We just need to figure out how to get me back once I’ve got Cas and Martha.”

Sam crosses to the door. He peers inside, considering. When he turns back around, Dean knows he has an idea. 

He just hopes it turns out better than the last one. It would be nice if this idea of Sam’s helps Castiel instead of getting him into trouble.

“Poltergeist,” Sam says.

Dean groans.

~~

He draws a barrier sigil into the door, more sure than ever that it will stall the creature only for a little while. But any time could be of use to them. Time for him to regain his strength, time for the Winchesters to either summon his brothers or come to his aid themselves.

They sit on the floor, backs literally and figuratively against the wall, and Ellie trembles against him. 

“I got my story,” she mutters. She shakes her head. “God, I wanted so bad to get out of this town. Right now if I can just get out of here, I’d be happy to work at that stupid fucking paper for the rest of my days.”

Castiel closes his eyes. He can feel the thing prowling around outside, testing the ward on the door. Eventually it will get in. Sometimes it actually knocks on the door. It could be testing for weaknesses, but Castiel thinks it is teasing them. Trying to drive them to a point where they let it in, in more ways than one, out of a sense of hopelessness.

It won’t come to that.

“You angels...you stick together, don’t you? So, maybe your family will come and get you, right?”

Castiel turns to look at her. “If they can.” He doesn’t say if they’re not fighting a battle somewhere. If they’re not trying to save a seal or punish some humans or save some more. He doesn’t say if his Father wills it.

He tries not to feel abandoned, and realises this place is doing more than smothering his Grace. He gets up, pulling Ellie to her feet. “It’s trying to force us to surrender,” he realises. “Making us believe we are beyond saving.”

More sigils appear, and now...now Castiel thinks, he has worked it out. The demonic garrison was abandoned. But the taint it left it behind grew and grew and soured the earth around it. And then the house was built on top, and gradually the evil bled through. The house became as quicksand – it was all too easy for something to slip through into the shell of the garrison.

And the thing prowling outside...perhaps simply the accumulation of that tainted power. Perhaps some person or thing caught in the garrison changed, adapted over time. 

There are no abandoned angel garrisons on Earth, but Castiel wonders. If it can happen here, can it also happen there? If for no other reason, he must survive this to warn the Host.

No, he thinks, suddenly. He must survive because Dean and Sam will need him. He must survive because without him Ellie will not. He must survive because he is not going to die here.

And as though his renewed determination is a challenge of sorts, the room door crashes inwards, and Ellie yells a warning as Martha rushes towards them.

~~

Uriel has sketched a circle on the ground. There’s markings that Dean’s never seen, some familiar from things he’s seen Castiel do, so they must be Enochian of a sort. That they’re powerful, he can’t deny. He can feel it, and it’s more than uncomfortable. It feels like his skin’s on fire just by standing close by.

For Sam, standing in the circle – it must be unbearable. Having Uriel standing so close to him must be even worse.

“This is a shit plan,” he tells them. 

“But it’ll work. Probably.” Sam shrugs, like he’s sorry this is all he’s got. “Look. You and I have a tie. We’re brothers. Castiel and Uriel have a tie. They’re brothers, too. And you and Castiel have a tie. The handprint. Where he pulled you out of Hell. If you go in there, this circle can use all those links to keep a...doorway, if you like...open. Like a rope that you can follow and you can drag Cas back.”

“And what about Martha?”

Sam shifts uncomfortably. “If you have a hold of her, it should work too. But if not, just you and Cas get out of there.”

Dean’s not happy about the thought of leaving anybody behind, but Cas is his priority. He got him into this, he has to get him back out.

His shotgun is in his left hand and a iron crowbar is in his right. It doesn’t seem like nearly enough, but this is strictly in and out. Grab Cas, Martha too if he can, and then get back to good old Earth.

That’s the plan, and there they go again. 

~~

Martha has changed a little more. Most of her face is blackened now, and all of her body. She swings an arm at Castiel and it throws him across the room. He smashes into the wall, and feels the surge of pain as the surface cracks and exposes more of this place’s hidden self. On his hands and knees he can only watch as Martha – or the thing that she has become – gives a hissy laugh and advances on him.

Ellie screams and charges it. She has no weapon, but her own anger and desperation, and Castiel tries to order her to leave, to run. But the agony seizes at his throat, and even his own voice is useless, trapped within him.

Martha howls and jerks, trying to dislodge her, but Ellie hangs on grimly – she’s on Martha’s back now, arms and legs locked around the twisted form. And then Martha does what Castiel supposes they both expected her – it – to do. Now that it’s over the surprise of Ellie’s attack, it simply turns and smashes itself against the wall. Again and again and again.

Ellie lets go. Castiel watches her slump slowly down the wall. Blood pours from her nose, and a trickle starts from the corner of her eye. Broken bones protrude from arms and legs. Even a rib pokes through her torn shirt, the end glistening and bloody.

Her soul is gone, and Castiel searches for it desperately. Determined that it won’t be lost here, trapped here.

But he can’t feel it now. Perhaps it is safe, ascended. Perhaps it has already been devoured by this place.

Martha wraps a hand around his throat, hauls him into the air, and throws him out into the hall.

~~

Dean stops in the first floor hall, peering through the gloom of shuttered windows and a place that hasn’t really had a proper airing in a long time. Maybe it’s because they know what this house is now. Maybe it’s because Castiel is trapped somewhere here but not here. Or maybe it’s because this place is getting worse, but he feels like he wants to vomit.

Sweat covers his body, and he knows it’s a reaction. It happens sometimes. A place is so wrong, so contaminated that the body has a response. It’s like the fight or flight thing, something built into humans so long ago, back when everybody knew werewolves existed and putting certain markings on your door was the only way to keep malevolent spirits from attacking you during the night.

He pushes it away, down, and focuses. He might not get a warning, he might just suddenly be here and then there, so he needs to be ready. But it hasn’t happened yet.

He walks on a little more, wondering if he needs to go upstairs, explore room by room. He doesn’t have time for that, and he bets it isn’t what Cas did either. He would have come in here, went straight for Martha and then turned to go. So probably no further than the second floor landing.

“Sam,” he calls back. “I’m going up.”

No one answers him. 

Dean glances at the door. It was opened. Now it’s closed, and beyond it...where he should still be able to see his brother and Uriel, he can’t see anything but darkness.

And now that he knows that, he sees that the gloom is gradually fading to night time shadow, like someone’s draping a black tarpaulin over the entire house.

That’s when he hears the yell of pain from above, and he knows that voice.

“Castiel!”

Dean charges for the stairs, putting all thoughts that now he’s trapped here too out of his mind. He has to find Cas first, and then...then he’ll worry about how to get out of here.

~~

When Dean stops answering Sam’s yells, and Edgar leans through the open door enough to report that the hall looks empty, Sam figures he’s where Cas is. It doesn’t give him any comfort. He wants to save Cas, but he has to admit he kind of wished this plan wouldn’t work. Not when it puts his brother at risk.

“Now we wait,” he says. He’s not happy about it, but as long as they keep the doorway open, Dean should be able to grab Castiel and get out.

So long as there’s nothing else in there they need to worry about.

~~

 

Castiel rolls out from under Martha. She howls in frustration, and goes after him again, grabbing the back of his neck, yanking him beneath her once more. Castiel punches her, hard enough that a human would have been pulverised by the blow.

Martha stops fighting with him for a moment, and then laughs. It’s low and guttural, and her eyes flare as she catches his wrists and pins them above his head with one hand. She presses a thigh across his torso to prevent him struggling, and uses her free hand to grab hold of his jaw.

She knows how a body works, and the pressure exerted forces Castiel to open his mouth. Martha leans forward, opening her own maw, and the stench draws a whine from the angel. This will corrupt him absolutely. He will be merged with this creature, this abomination, this thing forged from the hapless creatures that were trapped here. 

He doesn’t know what it will be able to do with the power of an angel. 

A thin strand of pitch dangles from its open mouth. Castiel struggles anew, but he knows he can’t escape this. He closes his eyes, desperate, and prays. God can reach him anywhere, and he knows the rumours among his brethren, that God has gone. Has left them, but he is sure of his Father’s love, and right now, right now....

“Get off of him, you fucking bitch,” someone yells, and just like that the pressure is gone.

He looks up to see Dean standing there, armed. The crowbar is covered with the same pitch like substance that covers Martha. Martha herself is on the floor, writhing at the touch of the iron. But she starts to get up, and Dean fires the shotgun at her. The rock salt seems to hurt worse, and for a moment, when Martha screams, it isn’t the creature alone that Castiel hears. It’s a mix of voices – Martha’s, and others, some young, some old and each voice carries with it the lives of their owners. Beneath them all is an inhuman hiss of pain and loathing.

Dean drops the crowbar, holds out his hand to Castiel, and pulls the angel to his feet. He shoves Castiel behind him, and starts to back up, herding Castiel towards the stairs. “Time to go, Cas. Sam and Uriel are trying to hold a doorway open, but...I think this place is fighting them. Anybody else here?”

Castiel glances back to the room where Ellie’s body lies. It’s a shell now, but he knows human custom requires some token of respect, of consideration. He takes a step forward, only for Dean to shoulder block him. 

“What are you doing?” From here he can see the slumped broken form and shakes his head. “No. No fucking way. She’s dead, Cas, and we will be too if we don’t move our asses. I mean it.” 

When Dean grabs at him again, to shove him along, Castiel slaps his hands away angrily. If the doorway is open.... He doesn’t look at Ellie again, just pulls Dean to him and flies.

~~

Just like that, Castiel bursts out of the house, with one hand fastened around Dean’s wrist. They hit the ground hard, and Sam starts towards them, but Dean yells, “Door!”

Something is coming. Sam can feel it. The front edge of the storm, advancing so fast any minute the heavens are going to open.

Or maybe not the heavens.

He glances at Uriel and understands. They step out of the circle, and Castiel seems to understand too. He raises a hand and the door slams shut under his power. Likely both the physical door on this plane, and the other door. The one no one can see from this side.

But none of them are imagining it when the door they can see shakes on its hinges. For a moment, there’s a shadow over it, like something pressing against it from the other side. Something strong and determined. But Castiel doesn’t waver, and then Uriel is standing over him, his hand also outstretched. Whatever it is, it’s no match for the angel brothers, and gradually the shaking and the feeling of something pretty fucking horrible being right there seems to fade.

Uriel shoves Dean roughly off Castiel, and pulls his brother to his feet. “Castiel. Are you alright?”

“No, he’s fucking not,” Dean snaps. He turns Castiel towards him, starts trying to check him over. “When I got there, bitch was trying to kill him.”

“She was not,” Castiel protests. 

Sam can see this is all kind of much for Cas. Dean is pushing, and Uriel is pushing, and anybody that was actually not trying to fuss the angel to death would see that Cas was a moment from pure freak out. 

“Hey,” Sam says. “Hey! He’s back, he’ll be okay, but what do you say we don’t do all of this here?”

Dean and Uriel glare at each other but they both back off. An equal amount of paces, but it’s room. Castiel moves a little as well, kind of towards Sam which is weird and endearing and...well, weird. But then Sam hasn’t gone all mother hen on him, so he supposes...yeah.

“And what happened to Martha?” Edgar asks.

Sam had kind of forgotten he was there. After Uriel appeared, and the plan resulted in magic circles appearing in the dirt, the sheriff shoved Blake in the car and locked the doors. He’d stayed by the car the rest of the time, just watching, like he wasn’t sure he was actually seeing this. 

Sam can’t blame him for that. It had been a hell of a jump from a missing persons’ case to something involving angels and demons. 

Castiel pauses, and then says, “She’s dead.”

Blake raps on the car door until Edgar lets him out. He approaches Castiel cautiously, unsure of him. 

“Did you...did you see my wife? Her name was Alison. She’s pretty, a redhead, and she has green eyes and a tiny scar on her cheek. You’d barely notice it. At least...well it’s been a long time since I saw her, so she might have changed, but....”

Sam can see Castiel weighing it up. For a moment he wants to shake Cas. Tell him to be straight with the guy. There’s no point in false hope, in sugar coating anything. 

And then Cas says, “I believe she is also dead. I’m sorry.”

Blake nods. He doesn’t say anything, but then he just hugs Castiel. It’s quick and tight, and then Blake just turns and walks away.

There’s a moment where no one says anything, and then Uriel stands next to Castiel, and says, simply, “We are summoned.”

Sam can’t be the only one who sees the way Castiel slumps a little. Dean does too, because he locks arms with Castiel, probably imagining he’s holding the angel up. 

“No. No way.”

“Dean,” Cas protests.

“No. Look, maybe junkless here can go fight the good fight, but don’t forget what I saw. She had you pinned and she was...I don’t even know what she was trying to do, but it didn’t look pleasant or painless. So you are not going off to fight when you can barely stand!”

Uriel’s eyes flash with temper but then he seems to take a good look at Castiel. Especially Castiel’s back, and Sam wonders if Castiel’s wings are hurt or something.

“Brother,” Uriel says. “I will report on what happened. Stay here. Rest and find me once you are healed.”

Just like that, Uriel is gone. The decision’s made, and Castiel does look put out that nobody actually asked for his input.

Sam remembers what it was like when that used to happen to him a lot.

Edgar comes over. “I’m gonna have to write this one up. No idea how, but you three are going to help.”

Dean turns towards Edgar, and Sam can tell when his brother’s about to get snarly.

“No,” Sam says. “I’ll tell you what. You and I will go back to the station and I’ll honestly tell you what I can about all of this. But Dean is taking Castiel somewhere he can recover. Okay.” He deliberately doesn’t make it sound like a question.

Dean gives him a look, one he hasn’t in a long time. Sam smiles, feels kind of like he’s about to hug his brother, and so gets into Edgar’s car and doesn’t look back as they drive off.

~~

Dean takes Cas back to the motel room. He isn’t sure what you do for a banged up angel, but maybe not much. Now he’s out of that place, Castiel seems to be getting stronger. He isn’t saying much, but that’s Castiel.

Dean convinces him to sit, anyway, on the edge of one of the beds. He pulls up a chair and the first aid kit, lays it open, and then stares blankly at the contents.

“Is there anything in here I can use on you?”

Castiel doesn’t even look at the box. “No. I have to go.”

Dean sighs. It’s annoying as hell to run into somebody as stubborn as he is. “I’m sorry.” He might as well get it out now before Castiel flits off onto his next angelic mission.

Castiel cocks his head at him. “For?”

Dean frowns at him. Anybody else, he’d think they were making the most of this, but Cas seems genuinely confused. 

“Being a dick,” he manages, because he’s not big on apologies, never has been. “You were too,” he adds, and for a moment, just a moment, there’s a hint of a smirk on Castiel’s face. It’s gone too damn quick to be sure though.

He covers the moment by turning to shove the first aid kit back in his bag, and when he turns back Castiel’s gone.

~~

He picks Sam up at the sheriff’s station. Edgar is staring forlornly at the report, and Sam doesn’t say much as he puts on his jacket and gets into the car. 

“We all packed?”

Dean nods. “Gonna need to do a laundry run.”

“Just not here. Castiel ok?”

He could just nod, turn the music up even louder, and leave it at that. And hope Sam leaves it at that. But they’re approaching the town boundary and he remembers what Sam says.

He indicates left, pulls in at the side of the road, and turns in his seat to face Sam.

“He’s good. Look, Sam. Cas pulled me out of Hell, you know? And I know it seems like we’re just tools to them, but Cas is different. I want to feel like we can trust him, but maybe he needs to feel like he can trust us too.”

Sam shrugs. “It is kind of useful to have an angel on call.”

Dean cringes a little at that. But Castiel did come when he asked. So maybe he can’t summon Cas with a whistle, but despite what the angel said after they were attacked by the witnesses, he at least knows now that Castiel is trying to keep an eye on him.

It’s enough anyway – he’s smoothed things over between himself and Cas, and himself and Sam, and maybe even Sam and Cas. At least as best he can, and that’s usually as much as they can do.

They crest the hill outside of town, and Dean stops the car when he sees it. The glow in the rear view mirror. 

“Sam, what the....”

They both get out, and stand for a while to watch as the Williams house burns.


End file.
